


Remember (The Day We Were Giving Up)

by euhemeria



Series: And, In Sign of Ancient Love, Their Plighted Hands They Join [74]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Loss, Love, Pre-Canon, Rebirth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 18:32:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19836097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euhemeria/pseuds/euhemeria
Summary: When she became useless to Overwatch, Captain Amari was worse than dead, was flesh without a soul, without a self, her purpose still tied up in the organization which left her body behind.  If Overwatch dies, she can, too, and Ana can learn who she is without having to carry the corpse of her former self along with her.Or,Captain Amari dies, and the Shrike is born.





	Remember (The Day We Were Giving Up)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sealfarts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sealfarts/gifts).



> my second piece for mariel's moon and back zine!! i really love how this one turned out, ngl. ana is my fave forever and always

Love is hard for Ana, as she suspects it is for many people. At once, she feels far too much of it and not enough. She loves her daughter, and it was that same love that drove Fareeha from her, that soured and slowly severed their connection. Now, she cannot speak to her child, would have nothing to say to her—but, still, she would die for Fareeha. Although she may have lost her nerve in the field, may no longer be reliably able to pull the trigger, may have grown hesitant, she knows she would not pause for a second to consider, if asked to die for her daughter.

That, at least, is proof of her love, the willingness to die.

Once, she offered the same to Sam, whispered to her husband words she was taught were romantic, were a declaration, were one of the sincerest demonstrations of affection. _Ana bamoot feek,_ she told him, _I die in you._ When she explained to him what it meant, he was horrified, told her it was obsession, and not love, to give oneself over like that to a lover, to want to be so consumed by them. What was meant as a warning she took as a rejection.

So she gave her love to her country, instead, when the Omnic Crisis began, allowed that to take his place; they at least wanted what she would give.

From Egypt, she went to Overwatch, and they were a better fit for her still, never demanded that which she could not offer, unlike motherhood, unlike being a spouse, only wanted her talent, her dedication, her life.

Slowly, Ana disappeared, and the woman who replaced her was someone stronger, someone made better by the love she felt for her cause. Unlike _mother_ , unlike _dearest,_ Captain Amari, callsign Horus, was strong, was fit, was always able to what was asked of her. When they needed her aim, she did not miss, when they needed her decisiveness, she acted swiftly, when they needed her instincts, she did not lead them astray.

They were a perfect fit, Overwatch and she, consuming her in all the ways she had always wanted, allowing her to disappear into something greater than herself.

What went wrong?

She did everything she was told to, obeyed without question, let Overwatch subsume her, let it become her identity and trusted that all would be well. Never did she falter; she was the perfect soldier, and to what end? 

Now, she is without them, is alone in a necropolis, a city of the dead, no Overwatch to protect her, no orders to follow, no commander to serve, watching the organization she would have— _should have_ —died for crawl towards its own painful end.

That she would have been happier to have died in Overwatch is a painful truth, but not one it would do her any good to deny. Here, alone, there is no one to see her shame, no one to know that she is slouched in her chair, watching the casualty reports, rather than at attention, no one to see that rather than look, as the faces of the dead appear on-screen, she picks at a piece of imagined lint on her cornflower blue pants.

The color, she thinks, is too light, is like she left her uniform to fade in the sun—but she has no uniform any longer, and soon enough neither will any of her former comrades, those of them who remain.

When they say Jack’s name, her former commander, she tries to force herself to watch, but cannot help but flinch back from his eyes, now unseeing. He looks more alive in the photograph than she does now, but she knows that he is buried under tons of rubble, whilst the only thing that buries her is her own guilt.

And that is the problem—the flinching and the guilt.

If she had loved Overwatch more perfectly, she would have died in it, for it, would have been killed in battle before allowing it to fall, but instead she began, somewhere along the way, to feel _guilty_ over her orders, to question them. Taking innocent lives—for she began, increasingly, to see many of the people whom she was ordered to kill as victims of circumstance, of the world created by the Omnic Crisis and Overwatch’s indelicate ascension—was always anathema to her, and over time her orders seemed more and more to call for such.

_Kill this man_ , her orders told her, _Or he will kill 1000 men_. 

In the beginning, that was easy—or easy to believe, and that belief made simpler the execution—but Fareeha’s enlistment changed that.

Ana loves her daughter, she does, would die for her, would kill for her, would do anything except be the mother she asks for, but Fareeha complicated _everything._

After her daughter enlisted, she could not help but notice how young they were, the soldiers who stood across from her on the field, and how frightened. All of them were someone’s daughter, someone’s son, someone’s child, longed for, loved, and many of them had parents just like herself, anxious when they heard a knock at their door, always afraid that this time their child would not have come home safe. If Ana killed them, she would not only be killing the child, but their family, too, the life they would have had if she did not pull the trigger—and those people affected? They were innocent in this.

So she doubted, allowed herself to think of her marks as people, not just a mission, and by so doing—it became impossible, then, for her not to let it eat at her, the orders she was given.

Once she questioned that one thing, she had to question the rest, question her orders, her role in shaping the world, what became of the people touched by her intervention. All of it led to that one moment, her downfall, the hesitation.

Here is a bitter truth about love: we think, all of us, that if we give everything of ourselves, we will receive the same in return. Our relationships will work, and we will feel loved, and things need never end. It is not true.

When Overwatch picked Ana, they did so for her aim, for her instincts, and for her _decisiveness_ —and in that moment she hesitated, she was no longer the woman they had chosen, no longer the commander who could, _would_ make the difficult decisions, when need be, who acted swiftly and rightly, her surety sparing them from destruction time and again. 

Ana gave everything to Overwatch: her body, her sanity, her life, and when the time came that she needed something from them, needed them to rescue her? 

Overwatch gave nothing back.

Only once did she hesitate, only once did she waver, only once was she less than everything they asked of her—and for that one time, that one instant of hesitation, she was left for dead. If she was not useful to them, she was nothing.

All that she gave them was for naught in that moment. A good soldier follows orders, a good sniper takes the shot. Ana did neither, and so she was no good to them. It did not matter, then, how long she had served, did not matter, then, the things she had forced herself to do, did not matter, then, how many nights she was woken by nightmares, how many voices of the dead tormented her, how many bodies she could see, skulls blown out by a shot from her own gun. What mattered was that she hesitated, that she stayed behind, that to save her would have been too expensive, too inconvenient, too risky to be worthwhile.

A number, she was a number.

Here is another number: 173.

173 confirmed deaths—so far. The number is expected to multiply by as many as ten times, in the coming days. Some of the bodies will be retrieved, will be shipped home to their respective countries for a proper burial, but all too many will be left to rot beneath the rubble where headquarters once stood, just as she was left.

Perhaps she deserves her fate, for having hesitated, perhaps one moment was enough to sever her entirely from Overwatch, even after so long, but the rest of them? What did any of those people do to deserve their fate?

That she thinks of their deaths as a cruelty and not a kindness surprises her. Once, she might have envied them. To die for what one believes in is a beautiful thing—and she would have done it gladly, would have died for Overwatch on the day they left her behind, nearly did—but now, she cannot see their deaths as being anything but senseless.

After all, they did not choose this, did not choose to be sacrificed. They were janitors, cooks, secretaries—were parents and children and lovers, were people with dreams and not all of them were _soldiers_. Overwatch will memorialize them all together, soldier and civilian alike, will speak of nobility, of sacrifice.

It will be a lie. Most of those people, the ones who worked at Headquarters, did not enlist. They never wanted to die. To call their deaths a sacrifice is an insult—not to soldiers, to people like Ana who would have gladly died for Overwatch, but to them. There is no nobility in slaughter, no sense to be made of the killing of innocents, their only crime proximity to a target.

Once, she would have taken their place—out of duty, yes, but also out of desire, out of love for her cause, her mission, her organization. For so long it was her job to do so, to die for others, to risk herself if it meant that innocents, those whose hands were not so stained as her own, would be spared.

Now, it is not.

Simple—or it should be.

Reality is often far messier than theory.

A theory: if she shoots at this precise angle, given the current wind velocity and trajectory, her shot will land right between her target’s eyes.

Reality: the shot lands (she never misses) but is not just her target she hits, and she watches the bloom of blood and viscera explode outwards to hit the child with him— _his_? Physically, the child is uninjured, but she knows she has ended two lives that day.

A theory: Overwatch was going to end one day—and likely soon—as public opinion increasingly turned against them, and the systematic instability they caused proved an impossible enemy to fight.

Reality: Overwatch dies not in a courtroom, in the halls of the United Nations, or in an office, it is blown apart just as surely as one of her targets, exploding all at once and taking with it the innocence of all who had the misfortune to watch its demise.

A theory: now that Overwatch is gone, is dead, Ana is set free, has nothing and no one left to die for (no one that would let her die for them, at least), and she can retire, can be at peace, finally, need no longer worry about what she will be asked to do next, can turn off the holovid and start the first day of the rest of her life.

Reality: she cannot escape it, the ending, cannot look away. She sits there, transfixed, alone in her own little city of the dead, and waits—she was taught, once, to confirm a kill, and she will do the same with Overwatch, will not believe it is dead, gone, until she sees it with her own two eyes. Although the compulsion, the _need_ to die for it ought to be gone, now, ought to have died with the organization, and thereby set her free, she does not feel any lighter for having seen this, feels the familiar weight of terror press down on her chest.

She cannot turn her head, cannot blink, for to blink in a firefight is to die, and she learned well to never look away.

She wants to, wants to shut her eyes and for everything to be over. 

Overwatch did nothing to confirm her death, so why should she confirm theirs?

Because it is not only their death she is watching, but her own.

Everything she had, everything she was, she gave to Overwatch. She died for them, died _in_ them, and she cannot escape them, even now. 

Who is she, without Overwatch? What does she want? What can she do? What purpose has she, a weapon with no eye to aim her, no hands to pull the trigger? 

She does not know, cannot know until Overwatch has died. 

When she became useless to Overwatch, Captain Amari was worse than dead, was flesh without a soul, without a self, her purpose still tied up in the organization which left her body behind. If Overwatch dies, she can, too, and Ana can learn who she is without having to carry the corpse of her former self along with her.

So she waits, and it is not a vigil or a wake, is the same sort of waiting she did time and again on missions, waiting for the right moment to strike, to pull the trigger, to end a life, and in so doing save—

—Whom, exactly? Herself? Surely not, there is little enough left of her for that. Her future? She has none, for she is dead. 

Perhaps, after everything, her final kill will save nothing and no one. A fitting end.

And it will be an end, for if she is not reborn, does not pull herself back together to become Captain Amari once again, having been freed from Overwatch, then the woman she was will be finally at rest, or something near to it.

Of course, for a proper burial one needs a body, whole as can be. Having lost her eye, Ana knows she can never again be so, and wonders what that will mean for her, one day. An imam could tell her, if only she asked, but she cannot help but feel it would be fruitless; she has no place amongst the righteous, anyway.

As if she deserves as much, she will let herself die with Overwatch, just as she ought to have died within it. It is not right, to have outlived the organization which she dissolved herself into, is a cruel reversal, denying her the fate she so dearly hoped for. 

For she did hope, even at her happiest, that she would not outlive Overwatch. She did not want to die then—in truth, does not want that now, even on the worst of nights, when all she feels is _danger_ , walls closing in with her unable to run—but she did not know who she would be, without Overwatch, could not imagine living a life outside of it.

Even now, having begun such a life, it feels unreal. 

What is real? 

Not the images she sees on the screen, the names she hears, the faces in pictures that would move again, if only she closed her eyes. They are gone now, dead, all of them, and she the one left to grieve, if that is what this is.

Not the people she killed, the orders she followed, the shots she took; or, they are real, but they happened to some other woman in some other time, and are not here now, in the present, belonging instead to some other life. 

Not the things Overwatch claimed to stand for, certainly, not the good that they claimed to be doing in the world, not the future she had hoped to build, the legacy.

All of it is gone now, or never was, and her noble death, her love, gone with it too.

_Ana bamoot feek_ , she said once, not a confession but a promise, one she did not know then that she would not keep.

_I die in you_ , said she and—

—she did not. She survived Overwatch, lived to watch on in shame as she was powerless to stop its demise, to save the people she once swore to protect. Now she sits in a tomb, where she belongs, and prays that death will take her, too, will fulfill her promise for her, before they are done counting the bodies.

—she did, in a way. Whoever Ana was when she enlisted has long since disappeared, was dead even before she and Overwatch parted ways, died when she doubted, died when she hesitated, died when she should have, with that (non-)fatal shot.

—she did not. She did not, because here is something real: the fabric of her pants beneath her fingers, and the heat of the desert air in her lungs, so oppressive in late summer that if she steps outside, it hits like a punch to the chest, and the pain in her eye that tells her it happened, it was real, and so, too, is she.

_I die in you_ , she swore, and she did not, will not.

Captain Amari died, this is true, and Horus, too.

But Ana? She lives, and there is still good in the world she must do.

On the holo, they update the kill count, _367 and counting,_ and she thinks, yes, that number is right. She will not make it 368, not today.

Love is hard for Ana, but if she becomes someone else, someone deadlier, someone harder, it need no longer touch her. No longer will she make any declarations, no longer will she swear her soul away to someone—something—that could never return her love in kind. 

She died in Overwatch, kept her promise as best as she was able, but now Overwatch is gone, too. It is time for her to move on.

**Author's Note:**

> literal translation of ana bamoot feek is "i die in u", but it really is just like "i love u so so much" similar sentiment to syrians saying t2bor which is like "may u bury me"... both are expressions that roughly means the speaker loves the other person so much they cant imagine outliving them/ever being without them. and ana is canonically maudlin and gothy enough i feel like she would say such things LKJASDFLKAJSDFLA
> 
> anyway i hope u enjoyed this and those of u who saw me tweeting abt this phrase on my nsfw twitter... NO it didnt have to do w this piece, thats another wip LMFAO
> 
> lmk ur thoughts!!


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